by Alan Cumyn
Silence.
“You spend too many afternoons boozing in the faculty lounge. I smell it on you a lot. How am I supposed to trust you to look after Matthew when you can be like this? You probably could have stopped my mother but you were too drunk to notice. It might be you someday out of control on the highway smashing into someone’s parent. Did you ever think of that?”
No answer. She submerged again, wet her hair completely, then sat up and scrubbed her face and body with hotel soap. How many times had her mother screamed at her father about his drinking? How many times did Julia swear she would never be in that same position?
Bob mumbled something outside the door.
“What?”
“You’re right,” he said simply.
“What?”
“You’re right. You’re absolutely right. I had too much to drink. I will never drink again in my life.”
“Fuck off,” she said.
“I’m not being facetious! You’re absolutely right. I had too much to drink, I wasn’t alert when I got home, you were exhausted, we could’ve all been killed. I will never drink again. I swear it absolutely.”
Julia didn’t comment. She pulled the plug, stepped out and dripped onto the bath mat, wrapped herself in thick, warm towels. She didn’t want to go out. But she wasn’t going to spend the night in the bathroom either.
When she opened the door he was standing inches away. He looked utterly ridiculous, still in his silly Leafs jacket. She pressed forward, eyes down, had to pause and press forward again before he got out of the way. She grabbed the bag of extra supplies from the dressing table, returned to the bathroom and brushed her teeth. Then she snapped off the bathroom light and the main light as well, plunging the room into darkness. In a few seconds she was between the sheets, towels discarded on the floor, thinking, Just try it. Just try getting into bed with me tonight.
She could hear him moving about the room, starting this way, going another, as if unable to decide what to do. Her eyes were clamped shut, she held her body as still as possible. She heard him sit down on the edge of Matthew’s bed then move off. For a while she couldn’t hear him at all, wondered if he had slipped out the door somehow. But there he was on the edge of her bed now, a voice in the darkness.
“This isn’t entirely my fault,” he said. “We don’t know for sure what started the fire. It could’ve been your mother. Could’ve been something else. Maybe, maybe right now it doesn’t matter. Maybe what’s important right now is that we were all spared. We had a terrible shock, an extremely close call, but we all have our lives, lives that we took for granted. We’re all right really. We get another chance.” Bob fell silent. Julia could hear his breathing – serious, a bit laboured – a deep bass beside Matthew’s shallow, sweet breaths.
He shifted his weight on the bed. Julia braced herself, but he didn’t try to come any closer.
32
The morning was so brilliantly sunny. Bob steered the van cautiously along the tree-lined street – few leaves left aloft now, the branches were mostly bare, looked like sharpened, dark fingers piercing the magnificent blue. The night had been … long, tense. But at breakfast, Julia was surprisingly upbeat and forward-looking. She gave him the directions now and he followed them soundlessly, turned into the neat asphalt driveway of the unfamiliar house, a little red-brick bungalow with a black roof, a tiny garage, an enormous blue tarp wrapped around the corner bush as part of the winter preparations. Bob turned off the engine but sat motionless while Julia took the child out of the carseat, brought him around to the driver’s side for kissing, then carried him, with carseat and extra diapers, up the walkway. Bob watched while Julia pressed the bell and waited, jiggled the boy, blew into his face and smiled. Then the door opened and a young woman named Brenda in a red fleecy reached out and embraced both Julia and Matthew. Bob knew her from the department, where she had been a student with Julia – her best friend, really, and not particularly in favour of Julia’s romance with her professor. After graduation she’d stayed on in the department as a research assistant working part-time for a meagre wage. She acknowledged Bob now – half-glare, half-wave – and Bob nodded back.
The two women stood talking on the doorstep, the baby somehow balanced between them, not quite handed over by Julia, still unreceived by Brenda. Bob could hear snatches of the conversation: “I was so worried” from Brenda, “saw it on the news” and “so glad you called, what else can we do?” and from Julia “this is so great” and “we were so lucky, it could have been worse.” And then they were going over parts of it again, repeating key phrases, standing in the cold wind on this brilliantly blue day while Bob sat in someone else’s ill-fitting clothes, painfully aware of his good fortune. It was as if in the middle of an intoxicating dream he had awoken to find that he had in fact just sleepwalked his way around a building ledge without falling.
Julia headed back to the car, stopped on the walkway to blow a kiss to Matthew and to thank Brenda again for taking him for the day. When she got in the car her face was flushed with an odd energy. “She is so nice,” she exuded. “Do you know, she asked if we wanted to stay in their guest room. I told her no, we were fine, but if the insurance doesn’t come across, you know, we might think about -” and on she went, recounting almost all of the conversation she had just had – twice – with Brenda. Bob backed the van out, nodded, smiled.
The house was only a short drive away. Julia talked animatedly while he drove. She was full of energy, as if she’d been awakened by this catastrophe, was focused now and coping brilliantly. She was the one who’d phoned the insurance people, who’d remembered the agent, looked up the phone number, described what had happened. She had also thought to call the contact at the fire department who was going to meet them at the house this morning. She was rattling off plans now: the logistics of replacing credit and identity cards, of getting cash, clothes, food, where to stay, what they might want to do with the house since they were going to have to renovate anyway. She chatted on, bright-eyed, hardly stopping for breath.
When they rounded the familiar corner he was unprepared for what he saw. The house appeared much the same as it always had been: the same brown stone walls, darkened windows, steeply sloping slate roof, the same dried ivy and crumbling driveway and porch that needed painting. In fact, it looked so astonishingly untouched that Bob thought for a moment that this too had been a narrow, miraculous escape. He’d been expecting a charred hole in the ground, blackened timbers, walls caved in, smouldering embers, piles of rubbish being picked over by scavengers and sniffing dogs.
But the place was still standing, looked surreally normal, unexceptional. Some of the windows were broken and had been covered. The front door had a board nailed over the gash down its centre. The lawn was chewed up by hundreds of muddy footprints – the firefighters trampling the place in their eagerness to save it. Yellow plastic hazard tape was stretched all around the property. But there were no crowds of neighbours, no dogs or kids, just a small red van with an unlit cherrytop. Bob parked on the side of the street. He let Julia get out first and greet the fire-department official. Bob hung back while she began to talk to him, gesture at the house, communicate her thanks. Julia made the introductions when Bob finally approached. The official was a short man, well into his fifties, with unkempt grey hair, a face of old shoe leather, friendly, compassionate eyes. He shook hands with Bob, and Bob immediately forgot his name. He felt sluggish, slow, inadequate.
“It really doesn’t look so bad from out here!” Julia said, in almost too sunny a way, somehow able to rise to meet the situation.
“In the end it was a fairly contained fire,” the official said. “It could’ve been worse. If we’d been called fifteen minutes later, I could see the whole place going up. There’s a lot of smoke and soot damage, though, and water. I’m sorry about that, the guys can’t really help it. I was through it this morning: most of the beams are still sound, but you’re going to need to replace your wiring. Some of th
e pipes have melted, and we’ve shut off the water, of course. The integrity of the kitchen floor is suspect, too, and your appliances are shot. You should be able to get a lot of the work done before the first snow, though, if you start right away. Have you got someplace to stay?”
“Temporarily,” Julia said, and she explained that the insurance agent was coming out any time now.
“We could wait for him,” the official said, looking at his watch. His face betrayed no sense of hurry.
“Can we have a look now?” Julia pressed, so they went in. At the door, Bob was almost overpowered by the lingering, acrid stench. Though near-normal from a distance, inside the house looked like a nightmare: a chaos of wet, charred walls, soot-blackened windows, baked carpet, singed paint, bubbled and blackened varnish, sodden, smoke-darkened coats in the cupboard, and on the floor a smashed mirror, gooey cobwebs of soot streaming from the ceilings, the kitchen a fallen, sullen cave littered with pieces of dishes, heat-warped cutlery, little melted plastic blobs that might have been anything, charred cupboards, the broken, reeking skeletons of the fridge and stove, burnt pieces of the ceiling dripping down.
Julia stood on the edge of the kitchen gaping while the fire official shone his flashlight into the darkest corners. The smell was awful, it made Bob’s lungs feel papery and brittle. “I’ve seen worse,” the man said. “Believe me, I’ve seen worse!”
Outside again, Bob stepped under the pine tree in the front yard, leaned over and retched thoroughly. His body shuddered and he felt a cloud of dizziness engulf him. He stood after a moment and felt Julia’s hand on his back. She handed him a rag and he cleaned himself slowly.
“I have to tell you how sorry I am,” she said. “It was your house, much more than mine. I should never have brought her home, left her unattended …”
“Stop,” he said.
“I just kept making mistake after mistake, and then I blamed you, and I almost killed us all …”
“Shhhh. No. We all made mistakes,” he said.
“… and I’m just so sorry. I am so, so very sorry.” He tried to hold her but she was wound up, suddenly and dangerously overstretched, a spring about to snap. She stepped away, seemed ready to continue the harangue against herself. But then her gaze swept up and down the street and she said, “Your car isn’t here. What’s-his-name forgot to drop it off. Clarence Boyd.”
“Ah,” Bob said uncomfortably.
“I hope it’s all right. I hope he didn’t take it for some joy ride and abandon it.”
“Actually,” Bob said quickly, “I think he might have brought it back to the university.”
“Why would he do that?” Her eyes narrowed.
The fire official came out of the house, then marked something in the notebook he kept in his back pocket.
“Because I asked him to, I guess,” Bob said.
“That’s not what you said last night.”
Bob stood still. Last night. Last night was the edge of the abyss – the pulling back, rather, the salvation.
A small blue car pulled up beyond the pine tree and a tall, thin, intense-looking man in a grey overcoat got out. Bob recognized the insurance agent from years ago when they’d changed the policy on the house after his divorce.
“I was concerned about other things last night,” Bob said. He knew that he should look her in the eye but he couldn’t, ended up gazing slightly over her head. He couldn’t let everything unravel now.
The insurance man ducked under the yellow hazard tape, was stepping towards them.
“Were you?” Julia asked. She looked at him too long, had not turned her gaze away even when the insurance man was nearly upon them.
“Bruce McCutcheon,” he said, and held out his bony hand. Bob took it gratefully. “Looks like a hell of a mess,” he said gravely. Julia continued to stare at Bob.
“You know what?” Bob said suddenly. “I’ve got to get to the university.”
“Bob!” Julia said.
“I just remembered, I think I left my wallet in my office after all, not in the house. It would be really useful to have some cards and cash. Don’t you think?”
“Bob,” she said again, her tone edged in ice. “We have to deal with the insurance right now.”
“I know. I know,” Bob said. “I wish I could. But I think I left my office unlocked. I’m afraid somebody will just see my wallet there on the desk.”
“You can’t be serious,” Julia said.
“I’m just -” Bob hesitated, looked in embarrassment, in some hope of aid, at Bruce McCutcheon, then lowered his voice. “My house has just been burned to shit, I almost lost my life, I think I’m doing pretty well, considering.”
“I can run you over to the university,” McCutcheon said, too helpfully. “After we’re done here.”
“I think … I think maybe I should just go,” Bob said. “I’ll be a few minutes, that’s all. I’m sorry, I feel like I have to do this now. I’ll be back before you know it.” He stepped off then, felt for the van keys in his pocket, knew they were staring at him.
Bob set his teeth, tried to get his heart to slow down. He felt suddenly plunged back into darkness, yearned for a quick, stiff drink to set him right again. There was a bottle in his office, and Julia would be thinking that was why he’d run off – of course she would; he’d given her no reason to think otherwise.
He parked the van in the empty departmental slot beside his fine little Porsche, got out, thought vaguely that he didn’t have a parking permit for the van. Avery aggressive towing company had won the surveillance contract. They checked every couple of hours, ruthlessly towed anything without a permit and dumped it in a dreary compound in darkest Gloucester, then charged one hundred and five dollars to relinquish the vehicle. Gerry Calcavecchia had had to pay even though he’d had a departmental sticker – it just wasn’t in the right spot on the windshield, and it would have taken a battery of lawyers to win a case against the towing company.
But what did it matter? Bob shoved his hands in his borrowed pockets, walked away. Everything was in ruins, was drab and done and unchangeable now. If they towed the van it would just be one more thing to deal with. Julia would take it in stride. She was so much stronger than he was now.
How quickly this slide into blackness, he thought. But I will not have a drink.
He wandered, distracted, up to the English department. The halls now were crowded with young people, with fresh energy, hopes and dreams, wearing sloppy pants and baseball hats turned backwards, with knapsacks and pimples and loud, brazen voices, with too much life. He felt like a heavy black rock in the current that he only now realized was sweeping past him.
And now everyone seemed to know it as well. Voices stilled, conversations took silly little hops, eyes turned. To see what? An engulfed weight. He felt their gazes, it was remarkable, all these students who weren’t his own. At least he didn’t think they were his. And they were stopping to watch him; the whole flow changed when he went by.
Whispers and subtle laughter and stares, outright, almost rude, the closer he got to the department. His heart began to jiggle nervously, remembering the night before. He almost felt as if he were still caught in the leather dress, that he was that conspicuous. It’s possible, he thought, that Barbara Law had seen something, had told someone … possible, but not likely. Not likely that everyone would know.
Perhaps it’s these borrowed clothes, he thought. But the gardening boots, the trousers so tight, sleeves too long, were hardly more outlandish than what some of the students were wearing. Still, he was a professor, the standards were different.
“Fire,” he said lamely, but people turned away.
He hurried into the departmental office and sought the refuge of Helen’s friendly face. She had a wonderful sense of humour, would laugh with him about his outfit. And there she was, absorbed in something on her computer screen, didn’t look up immediately when he walked in.
“Helen,” he said, happy to say her name, to ground himself in
something familiar and secure. She looked up then, but her smile didn’t follow. She appeared startled, almost frightened, as if she knew him to be a ghost. It couldn’t have just been his altered appearance. It occurred to him that there must have been a mistake – maybe the local news had reported him dead in the fire, that was what was behind all the whispers and stares.
He waited for her to recover, to say something about the fire or his clothing, or perhaps even about his continued existence, to cry out in joy and relief. But she didn’t, and she wasn’t her usual graceful self. She turned her eyes down quickly, her face looked strained, as if there were a sudden bad taste in her mouth.
“What? What is it?” he asked. “You heard about the fire? My home has been destroyed, it was a disaster, we could have all been killed.”
Even when he said those words her reaction was muted.
“Are you … are you all right?” she asked.
“Yes! Fine! We’re all fine!” he announced, too loudly, over-compensating. “I can’t stay long – insurance, everything to work out. Could you cancel my classes for this afternoon? And I’m afraid I’ve locked myself out of my office. I think you have an extra key, don’t you? Or am I going to have to track down the -”
Gerry Calcavecchia poked his head in the office at that moment and then did a cartoon double-take. Bob thought he was fooling, waited for the punch line. But Gerry couldn’t deliver it. Instead he dropped the papers he was carrying, then didn’t bend down to pick them up.
“What is it?” Bob implored.
“Bob, I guess you haven’t heard,” Helen said then, her voice so thin, the moment tight as a wire against his throat.
33
“I suppose you get used to it,” Julia said, not feeling used to it at all, but opaque and otherworldly. She was sitting in the passenger seat of the insurance man’s light-blue sedan – Bruce McCutcheon – who did seem used to it, tramping through burnt-out houses, picking over the ruined remains of flooded rooms, soggy carpets, cracked paintings, smoke-blackened drapes, melted toys, computer carcasses, splintered doors, of collapsed cupboards and blistered furniture and potted plants blasted across the floor by jets of water. Julia had two things in her hand: a water-stained photo album and Matthew’s cloth snake, Willy, damp and slightly singed, though with a still fully functioning rattle.